Currently there is no reliable biologic marker available for the assessment of donor lung grafts prior to transplantation that will predict outcome after transplantation. Donor selection is generally carried out based on a constellation of clinical findings such as: donor age, smoking history, arterial blood gas, chest radiograph findings, bronchoscopic findings and physical examination of the lung at the time of retrieval. While this is generally effective, it is an imprecise assessment and clinicians remain conservative, rejecting organs that are not clearly ideal for transplantation.1-6 
On the other hand, the shortage of donor organs is a serious problem in any type of organ transplantation, and especially so in lung transplantation.1,2,7,8 The insufficient supply of donor lungs causes prolonged waiting times and substantial waiting list mortality among potential recipients. Current empirical criteria for use of lungs from a potential organ donor were not based on any analysis of any data but have gained wide acceptance. This has lead to lung recovery on average from only 20% of the available pool. To overcome this shortage, some programs have resorted to the use of extended donors which are those that do not fit all of criteria outlined for “ideal” donor lungs.2 Extension of the donor lung pool to “non-ideal” donors may eventually lead to increased risk and post-operative complications.5 To date, we do not have reliable and reproducible markers that are able to predict the likelihood of adequate graft function or the incidence of severe ischemia-reperfusion injury. A reliable biological marker would greatly assist donor selection, would improve the safety of lung transplantation and would improve donor organ utilization.
It has been demonstrated that cytokine expression levels are associated with the degree of clinical impairment following lung transplantation.9-10 The inventors have also reported that the protein expression level of interleukin-8 (IL-8) showed significant correlation with decreased lung graft function and the incidence of severe ischemia-reperfusion injury early after reperfusion.11 These studies illustrated the possibility of using cytokine expression levels to aid clinical decision making to improve recipient outcome.
There is a need in the art for methods, kits and compositions for screening for, diagnosing or detecting risk of primary graft failure of a transplanted lung prior to transplantation.